


i’ll take your hand (for you to let it go, let it go)

by fiveyaaas



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blow Jobs, Complicated Relationships, Drinking, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:15:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27296272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyaaas/pseuds/fiveyaaas
Summary: ““Don’t tempt me with such warm and fuzzy nicknames,” Klaus quipped, lips curling around the cigarette butt. Diego snatched it from him, stomping on it and grimacing as he saw the mud against it, likely realizing that he’d nicked it off the ground.“[written for kliego week, day 3]
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves/Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 1
Kudos: 32
Collections: Kliego Week 2020





	i’ll take your hand (for you to let it go, let it go)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CarpeDiemForLife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarpeDiemForLife/gifts).



> Again, I apologize for this being a little late!!! I’m gifting this to CarpeDiemForLife, who loves angst and I think this was my most angsty fic for kliego week(?)

Huffing out a breath into his hands, Klaus contemplated going to a shelter. Certain ones he avoided, not the most welcoming of supposedly-welcoming people running them, but he imagined that he could go to one about an hour’s walk away before the storm actually hit. Normally, he wouldn’t care and would sleep on a park bench or whichever stretch of alley that was least likely to be infested with bed bugs, but there was supposed to be ice on the ground by morning. He picked a cigarette butt off the ground as he walked in that direction, figuring the warmth of the lighter he carried would be a nice reprieve for a few moments. Just as he flicked the flame on though, he heard a voice call out, “Don’t you fucking know how awful cigarettes are for your lungs, Four?” 

He raised his brows at his number and the familiar sound of Diego, wondering if he was some sort of hallucination until he was right in his face, dressed in clothing abhorrent enough that he  _ hoped  _ his subconscious hadn’t created them. 

“Don’t tempt me with such warm and fuzzy nicknames,” Klaus quipped, lips curling around the cigarette butt. Diego snatched it from him, stomping on it and grimacing as he saw the mud against it, likely realizing that he’d nicked it off the ground. 

“You high?” 

Klaus yawned, “Not particularly.”

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Only pot,” Klaus shrugged. 

Diego pursed his lips, seeming to ultimately decide that that was not worth reprimanding. Then, he asked, “You drunk?” 

Klaus shook his head. Diego’s lips tugged just a second, a half-smile that probably riled up the toxic masculinity demon that possessed him around the first time someone laughed at his closeness to Grace. Perplexingly, the demon didn’t make an appearance when Diego pulled him into a tight hug, grunting, “I’m glad you’re doing better than last time.”

Last time of course being when he picked him up from rehab, being the emergency contact Klaus had scribbled against his admission papers in a haste. 

There’d only been one overdose since then, which Klaus considered progress. The group therapist of the rehab he was a frequent flyer at didn’t seem to think so, but she also once suggested writing a letter (not to be sent, of course) to Sir Reginald Hargreeves, explaining how the trauma he put him through made him  _ feel.  _ When he’d simply wrote ‘I felt pretty shitty when you trafficked me as an infant and also pretty shitty with everything that came after’, she’d frowned at him. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m  _ great,”  _ Klaus muttered to Diego, shoving his hands into his pockets. They were always so cold these days, feeling like the corpses that he’d sometimes hover over, trying to get a little cash off their blubbering relatives. He hadn’t had much success this week, so he’d only been chewing on the stash of gummies he’d bought a few weeks ago after he lied about someone’s Great Aunt Dorothy saying she loved them and  _ didn’t  _ hold a grudge on them for not visiting her in the nursing home. 

Unfortunately for Klaus, the lack of substances was causing the phantoms to start flocking to his side again. Ben was the worst of all, yacking about some flowery bullshit along the lines of ‘telling Diego that you’re struggling is  _ healthy.’  _ As if  _ healthy  _ was an adjective befitting of the Hargreeves’ vocabulary. 

“You got a place to stay?” Diego questioned, also shoving his hands into his pockets. Klaus was surprised he wasn’t peeking over his shoulders to make sure his gym buddies didn’t catch him succumbing to freeing himself of the manly burden to endure the chill. 

Klaus figured if Diego was acting this positively right now, he could probably finagle himself a place to stay until the ice melted in a few days. He feigned his voice to sound abashedly pathetic enough that Diego would hear the deeply hidden woes and take pity upon him (he modeled his tone to be something similar to the day Luther realized Allison abandoned him for Hollywood, deciding he could always amp it up to the ‘Vanya slathering peanut butter and marshmallows on bread thinking it would bring Five home’ level if necessary.) “I was just walking to the shelter,” Klaus took a second to sigh. Ben was too polite to mention that his pathetic air  _ wasn’t _ acting, so he certainly didn’t intend to admit it. “Thought I’d drop there for a few days, maybe find some guilty lady that lives in the new delightfully gentrified apartment complex uptown to buy me dinner first.” 

“You want to just stay with me?” Diego asked. “It wouldn’t be an issue or anything, I’ve got a couch.” 

Klaus raised his brows, and Ben sighed loudly.  _ ‘You wanted him to take pity on me, didn’t you?’  _ Klaus wanted to say to him, but he knew that Diego hadn’t the slightest idea of Ben’s presence. He didn’t want to play medium right then. “I don’t want to burden you.” He knew he was laying it on thick, but he figured if he wasn’t sad enough, Diego would ask questions.

“You’re not a burden,” Diego insisted. “I was heading that way now.”

“Why were you even over here?”

He patted his side, where a radio was attached to his hip. “Got a call for this neighborhood earlier.”

Oh. So he was still harboring the delusion that he was a cop. Maybe he was the pathetic one here, needed to pick up some random junkie to satisfy his hero complex. 

Despite his reluctance to talk about his own problems, Klaus  _ was  _ curious about Diego, really did want to know if he was alright after not seeing him for a while. “Still doing the whole vigilante thing?” It wasn’t pervasive, just a small question he could choose to roll with. The urge to people-please was starting to rear its ugly head, and Klaus stifled it down. 

“Yeah.” 

Diego sounded too nonchalant, though, too  _ forced.  _ Warning bells sounded immediately in Klaus’s mind, and he couldn’t help himself from blurting, “You okay, Diego?”

Diego glanced down, clenching his jaw. Klaus expected him to try to force his features into a scowl, to start snapping at him (in what  _ would _ be a pretty convincing rage if Klaus had not seen through that bullshit years ago.) Oddly, Diego surprised him, confessing, “Eudora and I broke up.”

Klaus faintly recalled a mention of her when Diego had picked him up from rehab. Frankly, he’d been shocked to find out anybody was willing to stick with Diego at all. 

(It was  _ not _ the time to think about how Klaus used to fantasize a universe where he had the privilege to do just that.) 

“I’m sorry,” Klaus gritted out, deciding it was the chill in the air that caused his teeth to gnash together. Apparently, Diego did too, shrugging off his coat and draping it on Klaus’s shoulders. 

“It’s fucking freezing out here, man,” Diego told him. “Next time it’s like this, and you don’t got anywhere to go, just drop by.” 

Klaus felt his eyes go downcast as he clutched the coat to his shoulders, subtly inhaling the scent of Diego’s cologne. “Yeah,” Klaus muttered. “I’ll do that.” 

Another flash of that small smile. Klaus felt his own lips quirk in response, stunned that he was still Diego’s exception at all. 

Diego grabbed his arm absentmindedly as he led him to the car, opening the passenger door quickly. Klaus stifled the urge to comment something stupid like  _ ‘who knew you were such a  _ gentleman?’ He buckled his seatbelt instead, taking in the comforting scent of his old friend’s car. When Diego appeared inside, he blasted the heat, and Klaus told himself  _ that  _ was why his face went red as Diego said he was looking pretty good, all things considered. 

As they reached his place, Diego swerved the car around and announced, “I’m heading to the liquor store.”

Klaus nearly chuckled, but he knew Diego wouldn’t be drinking on a Tuesday night if he wasn’t upset. 

Still, he didn’t object when they picked up a liter of Everclear to share between them. 

They got back to his place, passing the bottle between them immediately after Diego had parked and locked the doors. He’d probably consumed about a shot and a half by the time they were opening the doors to his hovel. 

It was why he didn’t think much of the way Diego’s eyes followed his lips as they closed around the glass bottle, didn’t think much of the way he swiped his thumb across Klaus’s bottom lip after he’d finished taking a swig.

And by the time the bottle was about five eighths empty, it was why he didn't question it when Diego kissed his lips instead. 

They tugged off their clothes quickly after the kissing had devolved to making out to rutting against one another like animals in heat. Klaus shoved him against the cushions of the couch he was supposed to sleep on, groaning at the clang of Diego’s belt as it hit the ground. He had already been mouthing at his stomach, but, upon hearing the noise Diego made at the vibrations of Klaus’s mouth on his navel, he hooked his hands through the waistband of Diego’s boxers, pushing them down and letting his growing erection hit the air. Diego gripped his hair as Klaus’s mouth closed around his cock, guiding his movements with a roughness Klaus wanted to attribute to the alcohol in both of their systems. 

It didn’t take much time at all to tip Diego over the edge, and he wondered if Diego had thought about this as much as he had, swallowing his cum as he spilled into his mouth and licking up what had dribbled down his chin without much thought to the action. At the approving way Diego grunted though, he preened. 

Diego flipped them over, a mockery of some training exercise they’d had twelve or so years ago, pulling off Klaus’s remaining clothing to return the favor. He knotted his fingers through Diego’s hair, canting his hips up against his face, a strangled moan emitting from his lips as he heard Diego choke for just a second. Apparently finally having summoned the toxic masculinity demon back, he didn’t pull away after choking, just forced himself to keep going like it was some competition. Klaus couldn’t bring himself to chide him, thrusting into his face, essentially doing the exact opposite of that. 

He found that complimenting Diego yielded  _ excellent  _ results. Which made sense, considering that likely all of the people he’d grown up with in their cozy, little doomsday cult harbored a massive praise kink. Diego’s tongue ran down him, experimenting like he hadn’t done this before (and Klaus was pretty sure he hadn’t.) When Klaus came in his mouth, he made a point to swallow too. 

Panting, he pulled off of him. Klaus wasn’t sure which of them had drunk more Everclear, but he was pretty sure by the way his head spun when he lifted it up and the lack of any ghosts around him at all meant that it only took Diego about two or three shots to get there. Even though Diego had always been a lightweight, it  _ was _ Everclear, so it didn’t take a lot to reach this effect, anyways. 

“Don’t think I can,” Diego sighed, cheeks warm as he settled them against Klaus’s thighs. “Do anything else, Four. Sorry, I’m just starting to get sleepy.”

Klaus would have believed that he was tired if not for the fact that this was  _ Diego.  _ Clearly, he was already starting to regret it, starting to panic and think too much. 

But he  _ wasn’t  _ good at talking about shit like that, wasn’t good at talking much at all, so he just carded his fingers through Diego’s hair, letting his eyes glaze closed as well. 

And when Diego wasn’t there in the morning, when he avoided speaking to him much at all until Klaus abruptly skipped out upon the storm’s passing and was incapable of ignoring him any longer, Klaus didn’t try to speak to him then, either. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who read!!


End file.
